


The Same Place at the Same Time

by airspaniel



Category: New Amsterdam, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airspaniel/pseuds/airspaniel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six times that John Amsterdam crossed paths with Jack Harkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Place at the Same Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneiriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiriad/gifts).



> I would like to thank oneiriad for giving me the chance to write a story that I have been thinking about for years now, but never thought anyone else would ever be interested in enough for me to write it down. Gosh, I'm so thrilled to have been proven wrong! I really hope you like it. :)
> 
> Also, special thanks to elynross for being patient and brilliant and wonderful. Seriously, she deserves so much love and praise.

_ **1892** _

J. G. Benwaar was there to oversee the delivery of a desk. It was one he had built to be the centerpiece of Commissioner Weber's new office, stately and ornate, yet practical enough to suit the Colonel's sensibilities.

It was also a pretty flimsy reason that got him in the door. What he really wanted was to see the Ellis Island station, the new gateway to the United States of America, at his leisure. As an immigrant himself, of sorts, it was an inspiring sight. More than worth the price of a piece of furniture.

The sound of shouting distracted him from his reverie, and when a gunshot rang out seconds later, his feet were already moving towards it instinctively.

A man lay on the hardwood floor, not quite unconscious, bright blue eyes shocked and pained as he bled from a hole in his chest.

The medical facilities at the new Ellis Island station were perfectly adequate, but unfortunately overcrowded and critically understaffed. J. G. had been quick to take charge, directing the security officers to place the injured man on the very desk he had just delivered, taking advantage of the fact that the office was currently unoccupied.

The bloodstains would ruin the finish, but that was not something he thought about at the time.

The officers set the man down, and John drew on his years of experience as a field surgeon, still terribly fresh in his memory, to do what he could. But the wound was too ragged, too close to the heart, and there was nothing he could do. Shortly after four in the afternoon, the man died.

And shortly after that, he woke up again. J. G. was surprised, but not as surprised as he could have been.

He'd been there, and done the same thing, several times.

Later, he discovered the man's name was Jack Harkness, and as far as the city of New York and the United States of America were concerned, he was dead.

John didn't disabuse anyone of the notion. If Jack was anything like himself, he suspected the man would prefer it that way.

But he knew the truth, and he never forgot it.

_ **1917** _

He thought he saw Jack in a hospital in France, nearly twenty-five years later, through a haze of blood and morphine and bedcurtains. A young man, an orderly, was saying something; trying very hard to be reasonable with a difficult patient.

"Captain Harkness," he said. "You should be in bed."

Jack (if it was Jack) laughed, a flash of white teeth in perfect rows. "Yes, sir." His fingers wrapped around the young man's wrist, intimately. "Care to join me?"

The orderly blushed, rose red to the tips of his ears, making them stand out against the soft, pale blond of his hair. "Captain Harkness…" he protested. "You're injured."

John couldn't help but notice, he wasn't saying no.

In response, Jack just smiled; a little less amusement and a little more satisfaction in it. "Let you in on a little secret," he said, low and conspiratorial, and _hell_… that voice would be very hard to resist. Jack shifted his grip on the orderly's hand, bringing it up to his face; using the man's fingers to push the thick white bandage up his forehead, revealing nothing but smooth, perfect skin.

"Oh my god," the orderly gasped, sliding his fingers across Jack's face in amazement. "It's a miracle. It's like nothing ever…" His words were cut short on another sharp inhale as Jack brought his own hand up to still the man's roving hand, keeping it pressed to his cheek.

"Don't tell anyone," he whispered, turning his face to lay a kiss in the center of the orderly's palm. "Just between us."

"Yes…" The word was scarcely more than a breath, and John wasn't sure what they were talking about anymore. He closed his eyes, feeling like a voyeur.

When he opened them again, both men were gone, and he was more than half convinced he'd dreamed the whole thing. Just a trick of the morphine.

_ **1927** _

His wounds had healed, his head was clear, and he was definitely not dreaming. The brick wall was hard against his back, and the man shoving him against it was very real.

"Something I can help you with?" he said by way of greeting, voice level and unimpressed.

"You could say that, Mr. Harper. Or is it Benwaar? Van der Zee? Or are you going by Dutch again? You know, I never really liked that one."

John clenched his jaw. "Johnny's fine. And you're Jack Harkness."

A flicker of something like surprise crossed Jack's face, gone as soon as it was there. "_Captain_ Jack Harkness," he corrected.

"My apologies, _Captain_," John said, not at all sorry. "You gonna tell me what you want, or just stand around manhandling my person and wrinkling my suit?"

"Tempting offer, Johnny," Jack returned, just as flatly, still keeping John against the wall. "The people I work for are very curious about you. You and I have a lot in common, you see, and I'd very much like to discuss it with you."

John would be lying if he said he wasn't curious. "So let's discuss," he said, pushing himself away from the wall. "I know a place."

Jack stepped back just enough to let him move. "Lead the way."

\-----

Which is how they found themselves, twenty minutes later, sitting in a dim corner of the Penmar. An hour after that, John had told Jack his life story, up until the day he died saving the Lenape woman and woke up healed.

Jack nodded, considering. "That," he said at length, "is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And you say you're a con artist?"

"Stupid or not," John said, kind of offended. "That's my story. I won't age, I won't die, not until I find my soulmate. And until I find her, I'm stuck here."

Jack's face took on a thoughtful air. He leaned back in his chair, taking a long sip of his drink.

"Okay," he said decisively. "Now tell me the real reason."

_ **1944** _

They had both been on the beach at Normandy, though they wouldn't discover it until decades after it had happened. And both had left behind women they loved. Maybe Jack couldn't stand the idea of watching Estelle grow old without him. Maybe he didn't want to tell her the truth.

With Lily, John never got the chance. But life kept going.

_ **1977** _

"Found her yet?"

It had been a long time since John had heard that voice, but there was no mistaking it. He smiled despite himself.

"Hello, Jack. How did you get this number?"

Jack's laugh was tinny over the line. "You're not a hard man to find, John. Your aliases are pathetically transparent and you never leave the city. So predictable."

John was not impressed. "Says the man who hasn't left Cardiff since '45. Least my city has a nightlife."

Thirty years isn't three hundred," Jack returned. "And Cardiff isn't without its excitement, if you're open minded and know where to look."

"Was there a point to this call?" asked John, amusement bleeding through his sarcasm. "Or did you just run out of people in your own country to harass?"

Jack just laughed again. "Never. And my point was the question that you still haven't answered. Have you found her yet?"

Dozens of faces flickered through John's mind, making him sigh heavily under a wave of sadness and frustration. "If I had, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you."

"So you're saying I have a chance?"

"Never," John replied, not really in the mood for joking anymore.

If Jack noticed the shift in mood, he didn't acknowledge it or apologize for it. "The shaman didn't say that 'the one' would be a woman, you know."

John's patience was running out. "It's not you, Jack. And I'm hanging up now."

"Hold on," Jack said, and he may have sounded a little contrite. "I need your help with this thing I'm working on. Meet me at the Warwick tonight, around 11."

It took John a second to process. "You're here?" John was too surprised to put down the phone. "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

Jack's smug smile was audible. "Just be there."

\-----

And so John found himself panting for breath on the tight, winding streets of Chinatown at four in the morning, staring down at the… at the dead… Well, it was _dead_, that was all he was really sure of.

He looked up at Jack, eyes wide. "Who the hell did you say you worked for again?"

Jack holstered his gun; shrugged his shoulders back to resettle the heavy wool of his greatcoat. "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to…"

"Kill me?" John finished for him, the corner of his mouth curled up in a teasing smirk.

"No," Jack shook his head, something dark and earnest in his eyes. "Worse than that."

John didn't have to ask what it would be. He knew there were things worse than dying, and after this chase, after watching Jack put the… thing down, cold and practiced about it, he absolutely believed that Jack was capable of doing them.

The man was a soldier, after all.

It was a long walk back uptown to the hotel, and John wasn't sure exactly why he went along. It wasn't like Jack needed a guide, or an escort; but there was something companionable about the silence, something nice about Jack's company.

He'd never had a friend who knew his secrets. And maybe he and Jack weren't friends, but they were something. Even if they only spoke once every fifty years.

"Would you like to come up for a drink?" Jack asked, breaking the silence suddenly. John stopped a little short. He hadn't realized how close they were to their destination.

"I don't drink," he said, matter-of-factly. Jack knew everything else about him, he had to know that.

Jack turned to look at him, and his face was far more serious, far more intent than John was expecting. "Neither do I," he replied. "But that's not really what I was asking."

Oh.

A hundred responses came to mind, everything from outrage to polite refusal to violence, and all of them made more sense than what John heard himself saying a moment later.

"Yes, I would."

Jack smiled, something softer, something hotter in his expression. "Good," he said, and it sounded like a promise.

_ **1997** _

"You," Jack half-gasped, breath hot against the side of John's neck. "You've gotten better at this."

John laughed again, nipping at Jack's earlobe. "Well, it has been what? Twenty years?"

"Still…" Jack let his head fall back against the wall. "You'd think there'd be some kind of learning curve. Like, after four hundred years, you'd…"

"And I suppose you're just the same as you've always been," John cut him off, sinking his teeth a little harder than necessary into the curve of Jack's shoulder, earning him a hitched breath that wasn't quite a whine.

"That's kind of my thing," said Jack. Then, with a sudden movement, a hot slide of fingers up the bare skin of John's side, he reversed their positions; and John was the one rolling his head against the wall as Jack's clever hands made short work of his belt. "But I guess this old dog may have learned a few new tricks."

John leaned in and took Jack's lips again, grinning into the kiss. "Don't talk to me about old, junior. Now get those pants off."

Jack chuckled, a low vibration against John's chest. "Yes, sir."

_**2007**_  
John had never been in love with Jack Harkness. Never would be, and still wasn't, no matter how long they'd known each other, how many secrets they'd shared, or what the man could do with his hands.

But it would have been so easy. It would have been so good, and he'd be able to just _stop_. Sometimes all he wanted to do was stop.

He sighed out a breath, the soft sound loud in the silence of his loft. Jack turned his head, curious.

"I'm tired," he said, by way of explanation. He didn't have to clarify, didn't have to say anything more. The set of Jack's shoulders told him that the man understood, perfectly.

"I know," Jack told him, and there was so much wrapped in those two syllables. Regret and apology and sadness, and a deep commiseration. "I know."

"What if I never find her? Or him," John was quick to add, though he wasn't serious about it. He couldn't quite imagine being with a man after Jack, love or no. "What if I…" he trailed off, uncertain and more than a little scared of how that sentence would end.

Living forever. Thousands of years, maybe _millions_, after four hundred had already seemed like an eternity.

"You haven't been looking that hard," Jack said bluntly. "Billions of people in this world, and you've only looked in one city."

"It's New York City," John said, as if that answered everything. "Where else would she be?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Across the country. Across the ocean. Across the _galaxy_. Never know until you look."

John just shook his head. No, he would find her here, if she existed. This was his city, his home, his destiny.

"You never told me," he said at length, breaking the stillness that had descended. "Why you can't die."

Jack closed his eyes and took a breath, something like a smile passing over his face; as if lost in a distant and beautiful memory. Then he started laughing, loud and genuine.

"Well, you're not going to believe this, but… a long time ago, I saved a woman's life."


End file.
